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Q&A: Preteen Girls

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Developmental goals of each age are different. I went through a whole stage where all I wanted was to chase boys, engage in materialistic pursuits, and thought reading and especially being an academic were dumb things to do. You should have heard the contempt I heaped at people who learned Latin and the hatred I had for bookishness. And look at me now.

If you told me you had a preteen who was all about academics and productivity goals, then I’d worry. But yours sounds eminently normal. Please remember that pre-teen girls do come off as dumb and disorganized because their bodies are preparing for the enormous transformation of puberty. Without knowing that she’s doing it, your little girl is gathering energy to start turning into a woman. Girls become very forgetful and distracted at this age. They lose things all the time, and it feels like they are doing it on purpose. But it’s completely physical and in no way predicts what they will be as adults.

Remember mommy brain? When you were in the third trimester and then in the first year of your child’s life? The brain fog, the forgetfulness? I didn’t write a single line in that time. I felt completely stupid. It was because my body was occupied with the task of gestating and then nourishing a child. It’s a stage. It’s similar with preteen girls. It will all pass. She’ll be fine.

16 responses to “Q&A: Preteen Girls”

  1. oldcowboy3 Avatar
    oldcowboy3

    Remember, even “contempt”ible guys “who learned Latin” had to attract chix ;-D

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  2. xykademiqz Avatar
    xykademiqz

    Clarissa, kudos for the response. So thoughtful and on point.

    I am saddened that the question asker thinks their daughter is stupid and lazy; I guarantee the kid feels this. It reminds me of my mother, who showed me little other than thinly veiled disdain throughout my childhood and adolescence, because my temperament, talents, and interests were not something she understood or appreciated. Worse yet, they happened to greatly mirror those of my dad’s, of whom she was getting increasingly resentful, albeit with good reason.

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      That’s my story, too. ☹️

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    2. Avatar
      Anonymous

      Yeah. Know the feeling.

      Boys apparently go through something similar. My eldest is there. Still bright, curious, intellectually crackerjack. But suddenly: attention span of a coked up squirrel. Wanders off halfway through even the simplest chores. So bad this is a running joke now: “He was thinking about the Cessna 172.” Still extremely frustrating, like he’s back to being five and having to be supervised and cajoled through even the simplest tasks, not just to complete, but to avoid having dishes put away in the linen closet.

      I am looking for ways to possibly make these tasks competitive. Maybe there’s a way to leverage the whole testosterone thing…

      Anyway, my own childhood was nothing but criticism from my mother. I just kind of internalized it, but my sister, a decade older than me and determined to counteract some of it, made saying “I love you” to us younger sibs a sort of OCD ritual. Can’t hang up the phone without it. At first we humored her, but now it’s so habitual I sometimes do it on the phone with the most random people: utility clerks, church friends. I get it now, and I have my own version with the kids, where I try not to let any whole day go by without telling each of them that they’re great, I adore them, and they’re amazing people. I still have to correct behavior obviously, and sometimes I do a crap job of it because I’m too irritated. Just try really hard to make sure that’s not *all* my kids are hearing from me, is “you’re doing it wrong”.

      When the offense is more egregious, I try to wait until I’m more calm, and then instead of “don’t do that” (older kids only, not appropriate at 6), sit down and discuss the implications of the habit/behavior in question: like here’s *why* you can’t keep doing this thing, here’s how that translates into the adult world when you’re not adorable anymore, and what sorts of negative consequences adults can expect from doing this. Let’s run through some more appropriate strategies… I don’t know if it’s the right approach or not, tbh, but it’s the best I’ve got. Find out when they’re adults, I guess.

      So far so good though. I mean, all boys so there’s a lot of testosterone and competitive aggression going on, but they are still spontaneously nice to each other in between, and sometimes I hear little echoes of my efforts in them complimenting and encouraging each other, helping each other out, when they think nobody’s listening. My big goal here, after raising them to be functional adults, is that they still be friends when they’re grown. Parents get old and die, friends, jobs, (sadly) even spouses may come and go: siblings are forever. I want them to be there for each other the way my siblings are, though part of me knows that… my siblings and I are foxhole buddies, and I don’t want to re-create the conditions that produced that. We’ll see.

      -ethyl

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      1. Clarissa Avatar
        Clarissa

        My mother just didn’t like me when I was growing up. I could see the enormous disappointment she experienced every time she looked at me. I have no idea how it’s possible for a woman to feel like that towards her own child. I don’t get it on the physical level. It’s frequent, though, so somehow it exists.

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        1. xykademiqz Avatar
          xykademiqz

          “My mother just didn’t like me when I was growing up. I could see the enormous disappointment she experienced every time she looked at me.”

          Same here. She disliked everything about me and couldn’t (didn’t even care to) hide it.

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      2. oldcowboy3 Avatar
        oldcowboy3

        “…all boys so there’s a lot of testosterone and competitive aggression going on…”

        Kid, I am glad that you are handling it so well, my Mom had four boys and a single girl, and I don’t think she ever really grasped how different we are. All the competition, the fighting is necessary to teach young men how to learn to control themselves, society utterly depends upon it. We are going to be twice as large, likely three times as strong, and I won’t say anything about reason because, well, just because ;-D

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    3. ShadowsCollide Avatar
      ShadowsCollide

      That’s my mother too, growing up as the slightly tomboyish daughter of a gorgeous mother, she was always belittling my interests since they weren’t feminine or girly enough and I would rather hang out with my brother and male cousins than girls. Plus she’s a very driven, Type A personality and I was a daydreamer with a lazy streak, I’d rather read and write stories than do housework.

      Growing up I thought I was lazy and weird, I still do chores when she’s not around so she doesn’t criticize and do my reading and writing when stuff is done so she won’t nag. I still get a thrill wearing rock band shirts and dark makeup and listening to hard rock, she used to criticize me all the time for that

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      1. Avatar
        Anonymous

        I do wonder if there wasn’t a cause/effect thing going on with having unfeminine interests. Like, if you have a hostile relationship with your mother perhaps that is a psychological defense strategy in order to preserve your own selfhood and mental privacy that is preserved from competition/entanglement with a parent.

        -ethyl

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        1. Clarissa Avatar
          Clarissa

          Exactly. I’m into feminine stuff, dressing up, hair, make-up because my mother is not into that at all and at the same time she always had trouble understanding that she and I are different people. My outfits and makeup are a way visually to mark the difference between us.

          I’m very aware of it but since it’s not doing any harm and I enjoy it, I keep doing. It’s only when it gets into the unhealthy territory of “dad was a high achieving tyrant, so I’m on the dole” when one should really try to get out of this dynamic.

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          1. stille Avatar
            stille

            Same for me and my mother. There was a rather funny bit when there was a post about clothing styles and shadow work, and after describing mine, you’ve suggested the exact stuff my mom wore until I retired

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  3. Occasional Reader Avatar
    Occasional Reader

    I found this comment/question to be very very sad. Children become what you think of them. And even if you don’t tell them, they know what you think. If you think she is silly and unmotivated? Well, then she will be silly and unmotivated. If you believe her to be clever and resourceful, then she will become clever and resourceful. (And clever, resourceful girls can enjoy makeup, music, boys etc.)

    And don’t make this about some abstract political situation like “neo-liberalism”. You need to work on seeing your daughter’s worth and admirable qualities. (And that may begin with examining what you don’t like about yourself.)

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  4. Avatar
    Anonymous

    My parents worried a lot about how my siblings and I would fare in the world we had immigrated to (we moved to US when we were kids). The sentiment was “I am afraid other people won’t like or value you” which, for ( non-fancy working class) immigrants, seems like a pretty legitimate fear when they themselves are struggling to fit in and adapt to their new society. I don’t think it’s fair to say that they didn’t like us–there are definitely examples to the contrary–but sometimes it felt like concern over how we’d fit in overwhelmed their own feelings about us as individuals to the point that whether they liked us or not not was almost irrelevant.

    Maybe my comment just serves as yet another argument against immigration.

    -YZ

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    1. Clarissa Avatar
      Clarissa

      I promise that it would have been exactly the same had you never immigrated.

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    2. ShadowsCollide Avatar
      ShadowsCollide

      That’s how my mother felt when we were growing up, that people would look down on us for being the children of Cuban immigrants. My older brother and I were raised to be hyper-respectable and never get into trouble, she was very aware of negative stereotypes about Hispanic kids being bad at school, promiscuous and delinquent. We were raised more like Chinese and Indian immigrant kids than either normal American or immigrant Hispanic kids, to be excellent students and never get into trouble.

      Unfortunately for us, that meant we were also raised to think sex and dating are evil and having a bad reputation is the worst thing, both of us are lifelong celibates who don’t date and are virgins. I’m not interested in sex at all but my brother has a huge collection of porn and mom nearly blew a fuse when she accidentally discovered it at his house while trying to clean his room. Too many immigrant parents mess up their kids trying to be hyper respectable and poster children, our mother will never have grandchildren because of this

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  5. Avatar
    Anonymous

    Ugh.
    If we don’t see our children as the most incredible human beings, then who will? A mother who sees her child as unintelligent and unmotivated projects it onto the child. I’d also ask where you failed in your parenting if that’s the outcome (if it actually is). So so many parents wonder how to fix their children instead of fixing themselves.

    ugh.

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A conservative literary critic and college professor

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